Rumsfeld's Love Missile: Limp

As if Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wasn't in enough trouble for his disastrous mishandling of the Iraq war and the unfolding Abu Ghraib torture scandal, now comes a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists that his first and greatest love, the missile defense shield, is a total washout.

Though the system is scheduled to become operational by late 2004, the UCS finds that the Missile Defense Agency's series of tests have shown no apparent improvement against low-tech countermeasures that an enemy (North Korea, most likely) could use to throw off interceptors--and that basically we're no further along toward a workable missile defense system than we were 20 years ago:

The Block 2004 missile defense will have no demonstrated
capability to defend against a real attack since all flight intercept
tests have been conducted under highly scripted conditions with
the defense given advance information about the attack details...

...The basic goal of these intercept tests has, according to the MDA, been
to demonstrate hit to kill. But hit to kill was first demonstrated more than
20 years ago; the goal here should be to demonstrate hit to kill under
conditions relevant to intercepting long-range missiles. These tests have not
done so because the endgame conditions have been unrealistic.

Right-wing critics often blast the UCS as a liberal-leaning organization, and that's probably true (though it hardly disqualifies their scientific findings; if the program looked effective, they'd probably just keep quiet about it). But the group's findings echo those of the presumably non-partisan General Accounting Office, which just a couple weeks ago found that testing was behind schedule and was inadequate to gauge the effectiveness of the system and that contractors had overrun budgeted costs by some $380 million. "As a result, decision makers in DOD and Congress do not have a full understanding of the overall cost of developing and fielding the Ballistic Missile Defense System and what the system’s true capabilities will be."

Oh yeah--and despite the most favorable conditions, the tests were successful only 50 percent of the time. Even in George W. Bush's world, that's a failing grade. When it comes to stopping nuke-u-lar weapons, there's no "Gentleman's C."

Anyone with the stomach to learn the whole tragicomic development of the missile defense debate since Ronald Reagan first let his imagination soar in the late 1970s should read "Way Out There in the Blue," by Frances FitzGerald. The book not only details Reagan's initial obsession with the idea, but also describes how Rumsfeld and other neocon bigwigs battled to keep the flame burning through their political exile of the Clinton years (typically, Clinton cut funding for the project but never bothered to kill it off altogether--making it that much easier for the Republicans to blow additional tens of billions on this pipe dream since returning to power in 2001).

A much shorter but equally damning summary of this debacle can be found online in a piece from last month written by Paul Waldman of the Gadflyer. Waldman delivers the numbers, noting that Bush wants to spend over $10 billion for missile defense next year, and that about $100 billion has spent thus far--for, basically, nothing.

He also reminds us where the Bush administration's national security priorities really lay back in mid-2001: "Mere days before September 11, President Bush threatened to veto a defense appropriations bill because of a proposed amendment to divert money from missile defense to counterterrorism. They had a clear choice: missile defense or terrorism. Which was more important to them? Missile defense."

Unfortunately, Waldman also notes that John Kerry has offered his own tepid endorsement of the missile shield. As with so much else, on this issue he looks "less bad," rather than actually admirable. It's more than enough reason to work for his election, but hardly encouraging or inspiring... and it also means that he'll likely have to pass up a golden opportunity to blast Bush for dropping $10 billion on this wet dream of the defense industry while asking for ever more money to pay for his Iraq misadventure.